While reading Jeffrey Clement’s recent book “Corporations Are Not People,” I reluctantly had to take a break every so often to allow my blood pressure to subside. This powerful and timely book conveys some disturbing facts about the unchecked growth of corporate power in America — skyrocketing CEO compensation while average incomes stagnate; ever-increasing campaign donations and lobbying expenditures; and the insidious influence of money on election outcomes as well as legislative actions.

The author reminds us that corporations were created by governments to be an economic tool, not a political animal. So, when you hear someone say government should stay out of the “free” market, you can remind them that there would be no corporations without government.

Succumbing to the ongoing corporate brainwashing campaign, more and more people, including presidential candidates, are repeating the misguided and offensive line: “Corporations are people.” How is it that, after 236 years as a republic, we have come to this unprecedented decree? What has suddenly changed to bring this about? Nothing — except the power of corporations.

There are actually some pretty simple ways to tell that corporations aren’t people. For one, when they’re convicted of felonies, as BP, Exxon, GE, Koch Industries and countless more have been, no one goes to prison. And they don’t fight any of our numerous wars, though they do seem to profit mightily from them.

It’s significant that for most of our history, basic rights and freedoms were human rights. Now they’ve been extended to corporations regardless of the destructive impact on people’s fundamental rights. Two years ago, the Supreme Court’s shameful Citizens United decision allowed corporations for the first time to make unlimited and undisclosed campaign donations.

Amazingly, for a carefully selected set of elite jurists, this decision failed to recognize that the central and compelling rights in a democracy are human rights. They then compounded that egregious error by failing to follow a basic judicial principle: the need to always weigh one right against another and strike a balance that’s in the best interests of democracy.

A transnational corporation’s right to make a campaign donation is now seen as equivalent to my right to free speech. Really? In ruling the two are equivalent, the court in effect subjugated my rights to the corporation’s, given the great disparity between individual vs. corporate wealth and the latter’s ability to dominate election financing.
The dangerous and growing corporate power in politics is clearly not what the founders had in mind when they created this once great country. Thomas Jefferson once said that he hoped to “crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

The money in politics has undermined our democracy to the point where the average citizen believes his or her vote doesn’t matter, and it’s getting more and more difficult to argue with that sad conviction.

If America is going to return to democracy, it may require a constitutional amendment to reverse the plutocratic Citizens United decision. While possible, that will be an uphill fight. But the only reason a Congress member or legislator would oppose this is because he or she has been influenced by all the corporate money in politics via unchecked campaign donations and unrelenting lobbying activity. That’s how our government now works.

Even before Citizens United, we could predict with 90 percent accuracy who would win a major election simply by looking at who had the most money. Now the money threatens to completely drown out the voice of the people.

Advocates of so-called free markets cannot explain or justify the many perks corporations are getting from their newfound power, such as unneeded subsidies and tax loopholes. Aren’t BP and Exxon and GE making enough already? There’s no valid reason why these breaks exist; they’re simply a result of industry’s ability to push through favor after favor.

Like many, I am increasingly discouraged with the present state of affairs. These feelings tend to feed voter apathy and disengagement, which only reduces the power we have to make a difference. But people are starting to show an understandable outrage over the usurpation of our democracy, and this can be a springboard to engagement.

Tony Giordano is an adjunct college instructor and research consultant in social science who hails from Middletown.